The “Leftward Swing” of the Bourgeoisie and the Tasks of the Proletariat

Published:Proletary, No. 44, April 8 (21), 1909.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1973,

      Moscow,Volume 15,

      pages395-401.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

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Thequestion of the “leftward swing” of the commercial and
industrial bourgeoisie has long become a standing feature in the columns of our
legal press. It has been noted and acknowledged that the Octobrist press has a
regular periodic grumble against the “agrarian” (read: feudalist-
landlord) Duma and against the corresponding policy of tsarism. It has been
noted and acknowledged that quite a number of local amid national associations
of merchants and industrialists—from provincial stock exchange committees
to the “Board of Congresses of Representatives of Commerce and
Industry”—have in recent years, and particularly of late, been voicing
their dissatisfaction with this pro-landlord policy. There have been
descriptions of the Moscow “fraternisation of millions with
science”, to wit, the private conferences of Moscow’s and
St. Petersburg’s money-bags—Krestovnikov, Goujon, Volsky and
others—with the Cadet professors and writers—Manuilov, Struve,
Kiesewetter and Co. One need hardly add that the liberal press, including the
Menshevik publications, seize on every piece of news of this kind and blazon
forth with a thousand variations the rebirth and renovation of liberalism.

Thissensational “leftward swing” of the bourgeoisie has been
reflected in the “political” steps of the tsarist government and in
speeches in the Duma. Mr. Timiryazev, darling of the Russian merchants and at
the same time an old bureaucrat, has been appointed Minister of Commerce and
Industry. On March 13 he made a big “programme” speech in the
Duma—such ministerial speeches arc called programme speeches in all the
march-reactionary bourgeois and ordinarybourgeois parliaments in the world “just for show”. As a matter of fact the
tsarist Minister outlined no programme at all, and merely contented himself, as
usual, with meaning less courtesies to the capitalists and threats to the
working class, of course combining these threats with stereotyped hypocritical
expressions of “sympathy”. On March 19 these affectionate exchanges of the
Minister with the leaders of capital were repeated in Moscow, where Timiryazev
and Krestovnikov exchanged friendly speeches at a meeting of the Moscow Stock
Exchange Association. “Russia is sick, but with proper care her malady is not
dangerous, and will soon pass,” said Krestovnikov, welcoming the
highly-esteemed Timiryazev. While Timiryazev, thanking the highly-esteemed
Krestovnikov, signified on behalf of the government its benevolent consent to
“care for” the patient with the tried Stolypin remedies of the “transition
period”.

Thequestion, arises, what are the objective causes of this “leftward swing”
of the bourgeoisie, and what is its class significance? In. the periodicalVozrozhdeniye[1](No. 1–2) Comrade Martov, with a clarity and
directness not very usual for this writer, answers this question in an article
entitled “The ‘Leftward Swing’ of the Bourgeoisie”. “Experience has shown,”
he writes, “that if economic development has ripened for a precisely bourgeois
reformation and the bourgeoisie is unable to become its driving force, this only
means that the social change cannot be completed until the further development
of the class in question makes it the driving force.” And elsewhere: “Those
who assumed that the Constitution now in force represents a more or less organic
union of the nobility with the bourgeoisie as equally ‘counter-revolutionary
factors’ may regard phenomena of the kind indicated above [i. e., the “leftward
swing” of the bourgeoisie] merely as minor episodes, not necessarily connected
with the general trend of social development.... These isolated phenomena may
have a symptomatic importance only in the eyes of those who were certain apriorithat the course of social development is inexorably leading the
Russian bourgeoisie, as a class, into sharp opposition to the regime ... of
June 3.”

Comparewith this the declaration ofGolos Sotsial-Demokrata, No. 12:
“We agree also with the proposal of theCaucasians [i. e., Dan, Axelrod and Semyonov at the last conference of the
R.S.D.L.P.] to speak of the Russian monarchy not as ‘bourgeois’ but as
‘plutocratic’, for this amendment refutes the fundamentally false assertion of
the Bolshevik resolution that Russian tsarism is beginning to voice the class
interests of the bourgeoisie.”

Herewe have the political theory of Menshevism complete with all its
conclusions. If our revolution is bourgeois, it cannot be completed until the
bourgeoisie becomes its driving force. The “leftward swing” of the bourgeoisie
proves that it is becoming such a driving force, and there can be no question of
calling it counter-revolutionary. Tsarism in Russia is becoming, plutocratic,
not bourgeois. Obviously the logic of this is to advocate the pursuance of
opportunist tactics by the workers’ party in our bourgeois revolution, the
tactics of support to the liberals by the proletariat, as opposed to the tactics
which allot to the proletariat, allying to itself the peasantry, the leading
role in the bourgeois revolution—which it must play in spite of the vacillations and betrayals of liberalism.

TheMenshevik tactics stand revealed as a falsification of Marxism, as a
camouflaging of anti-Marxist content with “Marxist” phraseology. The method of
reasoning underlying these tactics is not that of Marxists but of liberals
dressed up as Marxists. To be convinced of this we have only to cast a cursory
glance at the history and results of the bourgeois revolution in Germany. InDie Neue Rheinische ZeitungMarx wrote about the causes of the defeat
of the revolution in 1848: “The big bourgeoisie, anti-revolutionary from the
very outset, concluded a defensive and offensive alliance with reaction out of
fear of the people, that is to say, the workers and the democratic

bourgeoisie.”[2]This was Marx’s point of view, and it is shared by all the
German Marxists in their estimate of 1848 and the subsequent tactics of the
German bourgeoisie. The counter-revolutionary nature of the big bourgeoisie did
not prevent it from “going left”, for instance,, in the period of the
constitutional conflict of the sixties; but inasmuch as the proletariat did not
take independent and strong action, the result of this “leftward swing” was
not a revolution but only a timid opposition that impelled the monarchy to
become more and morebourgeois, and did not destroy the alliance of the bourgeoisie with the
Junkers, i. e., the reactionary landlords.

Thatis how the Marxists look at it. The liberals, on the contrary,
take the view that the workers, with their immoderate demands, their
unreasonable revolutionariness, their ill-timed attacks on liberalism,
prevented the success of the cause of liberty in Germany by precipitating
their possible allies into the arms of reaction.

Itis quite obvious that our Mensheviks are using Marxist words to
disguise their falsification of Marxism, and to disguise their own
defectionfromMarxismtoliberalism.

Bothin France after 1789 and in Germany after 1848 the monarchy
undoubtedly made “a further step towards its transformation into a
bourgeois monarchy”. It is equally certain that the bourgeoisie became
counter-revolutionary after both these revolutions. Does this mean that
after 1789 in France and after 1848 in Germany the basis for a “leftward
swing” of the bourgeoisie, and for a subsequent bourgeois revolution, had
disappeared? Of course not. The French bourgeoisie, for all its
counter-revolutionariness “moved left”, for example, in 1830, and the
German in 1863-64. Inasmuch as the proletariat did not take independent
action, inasmuch as it did not win political power even for a short time
with the help of the revolutionary sections of the bourgeoisie, the
“leftward swing” of the bourgeoisie did not lead to revolution (Germany)
and led only to further steps in the transformation of the monarchy into a
bourgeois monarchy. To the extent that the proletariat did act
independently, and won political power in alliance with the revolutionary
sections of the bourgeoisie, overthrowing the old regime (as was the case
in France more than once in the nineteenth century), the “leftward swing”
of the bourgeoisie proved to be the prologue to a new bourgeois revolution.

Thisis the ABC of history that our Mensheviks have f or- gotten and
distorted, adopting the point of view of the liberals: there will be no
bourgeois revolution in Russia until the bourgeoisie becomes the driving
force! This is an abject failure to understand the dialectics of history
and the lessons of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, there will be
no bourgeois revolution in Russia until the proletariat, in alliance with
the revolutionary elementsof the bourgeoisie (i. e., with the peasantry in our case), becomes an
independent driving force, operating in spite of the vacillations and
betrayals of the unstable and counter revolutionary bourgeoisie.

Itwas not in the reign of Nicholas II, dear Menshevik comrades, but in
that of Alexander II that Russian tsarism began to be transformed into a
“plutocratic” monarchy, “beganto voice the class interests of
the bourgeoisie”. But it could never have voiced them had there been no
independent classorganisationof the bourgeoisie. The revolution
of 1905 has raised us to a higher stage, and the old struggle is being
renewed on a plane of more advanced political relations. The Third Duma is
the politically constituted, national alliance of the politicalorganisationsof the land lords and the big bourgeoisie. Tsarism
is making an at tempt to solve objectively-necessary historical problems
with the help of theorganisationsof these two classes. Will it
succeed in the attempt?

No.It turns out that the solution of such a problem has not only
defied a plutocratic tsarism, which had no national representation of the
“upper” classes to fall back on, but it defies even a semi-bourgeois
tsarism assisted by a Black-Hundred-bourgeois Duma. The Duma is helping it
to solve the problem. But this helpis provinginadequate. The
“leftward swing” of the bourgeoisie is due precisely to theobjectivefact that, in spite of Stolypin’s doctoring of tsarism,
its bourgeois evolution isnot working out. Just as before 1905,
in the period when tsarism knew nothing of representative institutions, the
“leftward swing” of the landlords and the marshals of nobility was a
symptom of maturing crisis, so in 1909, in the period when tsarism has
given national representation to the Krestovnikovs, the “leftward swing”
of these money-bags is asymptomthat “the objective tasks of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia remain unsolved”, and that “themainfactors which brought about the Revolution of 1905, continue
to operate” (the conference resolution on the present situation).

TheMensheviks confine their argument to the fact that the revolution
in our country is bourgeois and that our bourgeoisie is “going left”. But
stopping there means converting Marxism, a “guide to action”, into a dead
letter;it means falsifying Marxism and virtually adopting the point of view of
liberalism. There can be a bourgeois revolution without a single complete
victory of the proletariat, when the result is the gradual conversion of
the old monarchy into a bourgeois and bourgeois-imperialist monarchy (for
instance, Germany). There can be a bourgeois revolution with a number of
independent actions by the proletariat, producing both complete victories
and heavy defeats, when the result is a bourgeois republic (for instance,
France).

Thequestion arises: has Russian history decided in favour of one path
or the other? The Mensheviks do not understand this question, they are
afraid to raise it, they avoid it, not realising that by avoiding it they
are actually dragging in their policy at the tail of the liberal
bourgeoisie. We are of the opinion that Russian history has not yet
answered this question, that it will be answered by the struggle of the
classes in the next few years, that the first round of our bourgeois
revolution (1905-07) has proved beyond doubt that our bourgeoisie is
utterly unstable and counter revolutionary, proved that our proletariat is
capable of being theleaderof a victorious revolution, proved the
capacity of the democratic masses of the peasantry to help the proletariat
make this revolution victorious.

Andhere again we come up against the purely liberal point of view of
the Mensheviks regarding ourTrudovikpeasantry. The Mensheviks
say the Trudoviks are full of petty bourgeois utopias, their fight for the
land is a fight in the name of the absurd and reactionary slogans of
socialisation of land or equalised laud tenure; “consequently” the
Trudovik fight for the landweakensthe fight for freedom, the
victory of the Trudoviks would be a reactionary victory of countryside over
town. That is the gist both of Martynov’s reasoning in No. 10-11 ofGolos Sotsial-Demokrataand of Martov’s arguments in the symposiumThe Social Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the Twentieth
Century.

Suchan estimate of the Trudovik peasantry is just as outrageous a
distortion of Marxism as the discourses, on the bourgeois revolution quoted
above. It is doctrinairism at its worst when a Marxist is unable to grasp
theactualsignificance of a revolutionary struggle against the
whole system of contemporary landed proprietorship, under theintegument of a Narodnikdoctrinewhich, really is absurd,
visionary and reactionary when viewed as a socialist doctrine. The
Mensheviks display incredible blindness and ignorance of the dialectics of
Marxism when they fail to see that, the conditions of life of the Russian
peasantry being what they are, its bourgeois-democratic revolutionary
spirit could not be ideologically expressed otherwise than in the form of
“belief” in the sovereign virtue of land equalisation. “What formally
may be economically incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point
of view of world

history.”[3]Our Mensheviks have never been able to under stand these
words of Engels. While exposing thefalsityof the Narodnikdoctrine, they closed their eyes like pedants to thetruthof the contemporary struggle in the contemporary bourgeois
revolution, which is expressed by these quasi-socialist doctrines.

Butwe say: resolute struggle against the quasi-socialist doctrines of
the Trudoviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists and Co.,
and frank, firm recognition of thealliancebetween the
proletariat and the revolutionary peasantry in thebourgeoisrevolution. The victory of this revolution will dissipate like a puff of
smoke the doctrine of the sovereign virtue of land equalisation, but the
masses of the peasantry in the present struggle express by this doctrine
the breadth, strength, courage, enthusiasm, sincerity and invincibility of
their historic action which heralds a Russia cleansed of each and every
survival of feudalism.

Thebourgeoisie is going left, down with Trudovik utopianism, long live
support of the bourgeoisie—argue the Mensheviks. The bourgeoisie is going
left, we shall say: that means new powder is accumulating in the
powder-magazine of the Russian revolution. If today the Krestovnikovs are
saying “Russia is sick”, it means that tomorrow the socialist proletariat
will go into action, leading the democratic peasantry, and will say: “We
shall cure her!”

[1]Vozrozhdeniye(Revival)—a journal of the Menshevik
liquidators, published in Moscow from December 1908 to July 1910.

[2]SeeK. Marx und F. Engels, “Die Berliner Debatte über die
Revolution”.

[3]Leninis quoting from Engels’s “Preface to the First German
Edition” of K. Marx’s workThe Poverty of Philosophy(see
K. Marx,The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, pp. 12-13).